


start with one

by helsinkibaby



Category: The Flying Doctors
Genre: Canon Het Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Happily Ever After, Post canon, Romance, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-07-25
Packaged: 2018-12-07 00:02:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11611722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helsinkibaby/pseuds/helsinkibaby
Summary: Four years ago, he listened to a bus crash over a CB radio and his life changed forever. Now, everything changes again.





	start with one

**Author's Note:**

> For gem prompt bingo. Prompt : everything changes

It happened so quickly that Tom reacted before he was even aware of what was going on. All he knew was that one moment he and Chris were standing at the kitchen counter, as they'd done on so many nights since she'd joined him in Africa, preparing that night's dinner, talking over their day - even though they were working in the same village, they were busy enough that hours went by without them catching so much as a glimpse at one another. It was a perfectly normal, every day occurrence. What wasn't so normal was the moment where Chris stopped talking mid-sentence, slowly and deliberately put the knife she was holding down on the counter, gripped the edge with both hands so tightly her knuckles turned white. 

"Chris?" Tom's own knife joined hers on the counter and he turned to her, one hand finding the small of her back. 

Chris lifted one hand to her forehead, pushed back a lock of hair. "I don't feel very-" was as much as she got out before her face lost any colour it might have had and she slumped against him as her eyes rolled back in her head. 

Tom caught her easily as she fell, holding her up, running a hand across her cheek. He said her name a couple of times and it could only have been mere seconds before her eyes began to flutter open again, but they were some of the longest seconds he could ever remember. "Tom?" Her voice was a groggy mumble when she did speak and he scooped her up easily into his arms. 

"Come on," he said, carrying her into their living room, depositing her on the couch before going back to the kitchen and pouring her a glass of water. By the time he came back to her, there was a little more colour in her cheeks and she gave him a smile that was more embarrassed than anything else. He didn't say anything as he sat down beside her, handed her the glass and watched her sip slowly. Only when the glass was almost empty did he speak. "Feeling better?" He pushed back a strand of hair, the same one she'd pushed back before she fainted, and she leaned in to his touch. 

"A bit." She was being honest with him and he knew that it didn't come easily to her, not when she was talking about her health at any rate. The old adage about doctors being the worst patients was certainly true, Tom knew, when it came to his wife. "I don't know what happened there." 

"You fainted." Tom might have been pointing out the obvious but he knew there was something on Chris's mind when she didn't glare at him and swat his shoulder like she usually would. "But it's not the first time you've got light-headed lately, is it?" 

Chris had the grace to look down but not before he caught her biting her lip. He'd known she hadn't realised that he'd figured out what was happening. "No," she admitted quietly and when she didn't look back up, Tom played a hunch. 

"Is there more?"

Slowly, Chris nodded. "I'm tired all the time." Tom had noticed that too - usually, when they went to bed, they stayed awake for a while, sometimes talking, sometimes not. For the last couple of weeks, she'd been asleep the moment her head hit the pillow, sometimes even before that - he'd had to wake her from this very couch once or twice. "No appetite... constant low level nausea." She drew in a shuddering breath, leaning over to place the glass of water on the table. "I've had these symptoms before." 

That made Tom blink in surprise. "You have?"

Chris's hand reached up to her chest, just above her heart and he realised suddenly what she meant. "Once," she told him with a shaky smile and he could see the worry - no, he corrected, the fear - in her eyes. 

He let out a deep breath as he took her hand in both of his. "Chris," he said, weighing each word carefully, "I just want you to think about something. If a woman came in to see you, a woman without your medical history, but your age, happily married, madly in love-" That was said with a kiss to her knuckles as punctuation and her smile this time was much more genuine. "If she presented with the exact symptoms you just described... I don't think a pheochromocytoma would be your starting point for treatment." 

Chris stared at him, her eyes flicking all over his face as she tried to figure out what he was talking about. He could see the exact moment the penny finally dropped when her eyes grew wide and her mouth gaped open. "No." 

Tom lifted both eyebrows and nodded, tried to keep a smile back from his face. "Yes." 

"No, it's not possible." Chris shook her head but he could tell she was considering the idea. "We're being careful, taking precautions..."

"And if your hypothetical patient told you that, I'm pretty sure you'd tell her that the only one hundred per cent reliable method of birth control is abstinence." He did his best to look apologetic at that but it was pretty hard when her cheeks flushed scarlet at the memory of how assiduously they had not been practising that particular form of contraception. 

"You really think..." Her voice, soft and disbelieving, trailed off and when he nodded, her eyes narrowed. "How long have you-"

He squeezed her hand, still caught in both of his. "Since last week," he told her quietly, lifting one hand from hers to touch her cheek. "Suspected... hoped, maybe." He shrugged. "I have a test in my bag. If you want." 

She nodded slowly, her eyes sparkling, but not as much as they were sparkling a few minutes later when his suspicions were proved correct and, half laughing, half crying, she wrapped her arms around his neck and let him lift her off her feet. 

Then they were back on the couch again, his arms around her waist, her head on his shoulder. One of his hands rested on her stomach, pushing her blouse up from her skirt so that his fingers could touch the smooth skin there. "I'll call headquarters tomorrow," he said and she lifted her head up, brow wrinkling in a frown. "I'll let them know we can stay until they sort out replacements for us... and I'm sure the RFDS will take us back, I mean, we may not get Cooper's Crossing again but... what?" 

"What are you talking about?" Once again, Chris was staring at him like he was speaking in tongues but this time, he was fairly sure he was staring back at her the same way. 

"Going back home."

She tilted her head, sat up a little straighter. "Why would we-"

"Chris, we're not having the baby here." He was sitting up straight now too. 

"Why not? Tom, this place, us here... this is your dream, it's everything you wanted..." 

"This _was_ my dream," he told her. "But four years ago, I stood in Cooper's Crossing and listened to a bus crash with you on it. I thought I'd lost you then and I knew... I knew, I never wanted to feel that way again." Even now, he could still feel the terror he'd felt that day, still had nightmares about it sometimes - it had replaced final med school exams as his stress dream of choice. "You know the risks associated with childbirth here, compared to home... and, darling, you had open heart surgery a few years ago..."

"Which completely cured me." But there was a shadow in her eyes now, part of the fear he knew she'd been living with for the last week since her early pregnancy symptoms had become noticeable. 

"You can't tell me you wouldn't feel better with your specialist keeping tabs on you." She looked down, which only served to prove his point, but she still argued with him - well, she wouldn't be his Chris if she didn't. 

"There's only a tiny chance-" she began, and he didn't let her finish that thought. 

"It could be one in a million... one in a billion, it'd still be too high for me." He reached out, took her face in his hands. "Chris, everything changed for me that day in Cooper's Crossing... and it changed again for me tonight. We've had a great run here... we've made good friends, we've made a difference. Now..." He dropped his hands, splayed them both across her stomach. "I want to go home, Chris... raise this little one there. And any more who might come along." 

Chris giggled at that, even if her lashes were damp with tears that were threatening to fall. "Let's start with one," she said, a little breathless. "See how we get on." 

Tom slid his hands around her waist, let them rest low on her hips. "We can still practise going for number two though, right?" She giggled again but she didn't answer, not that he gave her a chance when he drew her close and kissed her before she could. 

Still though, there were other ways of answering a question than verbally, and she got her point across well enough.


End file.
